Men, Listen to Women about Abortion Rights
I am a thirty-six-year-old mixed-heritage Filipina mother. I shared with my ongoing RC class the following thoughts about the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on abortion rights:
Men, it would be good for you to listen to a woman (or many women) discharge about this. Many women I know, inside and outside of RC, are sharing stories of their pregnancies, abortions, and related life experiences with other women. For a man to listen to me about these things and show that he is truly with and for me as a woman, no matter what [whatever happens], would be a massive contradiction to the false and oppressive divisions we have experienced.
Men, offer listening time to the women in your life (or women you don’t know) on how they are feeling—and just listen. Get Co-Counseling sessions with other men about what it’s like to hear what they say.
This ruling is a human rights issue that affects many groups. However, it is designed to target women in a particular way. It reinforces how womanhood has been wrongfully defined, confined, and controlled by government. It aims to squash women’s self-sovereignty. It also ignores and makes illegitimate the experiences of Trans and non-binary people. And, per usual, poor people, unmarried people, and Indigenous and Global Majority people will bear the brunt of it. The intersection of classism, racism, and gender identity makes it hard to think clearly about all this.
Women, discharge on any place where you feel terror or confusion or can’t feel at all. Accept one-way time. Get a hug. Remember your power. We are powerful. We still have complete self-sovereignty. Some powerful people are making rules to scare us and punish us for acting. The threat is real, but there is a lot we can do.
A man in my class said, “As an ally to all women, I commit to listening to you and to being there with you in your re-emergence.” This was a good starting place.
It has been useful for me to discharge on the moment I gave birth to my son (now six years old), when I could feel on a cellular level my power and self-sovereignty as a human being. Remembering it contradicts my distress recordings of powerlessness and almost always brings healing discharge and re-evaluation.
USA
Reprinted from the e-mail discussion list for RC Community members
(Present Time 209, October 2022)